Krafton Preparing To Go Public, Could Be Worth About $18 Billion

Krafton is just about ready to go public, in what would be the biggest initial public offering (IPO) ever for a Korean company. The maker of TERA and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has applied for preliminary approval of its IPO, Reuters is reporting out of Seoul.

Analysts peg the firm's valuation at about 20 trillion South Korean won, or nearly $18 billion USD. That's certainly a lot, but it's down one third from the $27.2 billion estimate that was given in January, when news of Krafton's going public was first circulating.

The founder of Krafton, Chang Byung-gyu, is the majority shareholder in the company, just edging out Tencent, 16.4% to 15.5%.

Krafton said that PUBG has "up to 55 million daily users excluding China on weekends and 70 million copies of the game sold for PC and game consoles" -- a pair of claims that seem difficult to reconcile with each other. (By comparison, Blizzard reported that World of Warcraft had sold 100 million copies at around the time that its active player count was in the 10-million range.) Krafton's revenue in 2020 was reported at 1.67 trillion KRW (about $1.5 billion), with an operating profit of 774 billion KRW.